School Project–Bee Abeja

The 2nd grade year is coming to an end. Its hard to believe in 6 more days Ally will be a 3rd grader! Its true – she just keeps growing up. In 2nd grade this year the students had to do a 3-D model of the life cycle of an insect. Ally chose the bee. Students were encouraged to use recycled materials and be creative.  Today was the showcase for parents.

Ally with her model.

Turns out that Larva and Pupa are the same work in English and in Spanish. But the other stages of the life cycle are different in the two languages. Since Ally goes to a bilingual school the presentation was to be in both languages as well.

Ally came up with this model on her own. She cut down paper towel and toilet paper tubes and painted them yellow to create the honeycomb in a hive. The holder is a take-out food box she wanted to use. For each life cycle she found things in our pantry to use:

1) Huevo egg is a grain of rice

2) Larva is a pine nut

3) Pupa is a cashew, and there is a cashew wrapped in thread to show how it makes a cocoon.

4) Adult Bee / Adulta Abeja – this is crafted of an almond, a black pompom and a jelly bean all hot-glued together to create the bee’s 3-part body. Then she cut out plastic (from a soda bottle carrier) to create the 4 wings on each bee.

Her model shows the Queen been (the larger one made of a walnut) laying the egg, an adult bee feeding the pupa, and the 3rd adult bee has hatched.

Ally’s friend Daniela had the bee as well. The girls made their own models at home, but collaborated in class on a poster.

It was filled with interesting facts about Bees

 

This is Ally’s friend Clemens – he had the praying mantis.

Ally’s friend Eric did the praying mantis as well (right above) and Ally thought the spider’s web was cool.

Parents, teachers, administrators walked around to the different pairs to learn about the insects. On the left above, Ally is giving her presentation to the school principal.

Ally and Mommy. Ally worked really hard on her model and I was thrilled with how creative she was in using all the materials. We did not buy anything for the project – we used all things we had on hand. Most important is that Ally is proud of her project, and was excited to show it to people.

Its been a challenging year for Ally, (not academically) and I was grateful to have a few minutes to talk to a few parents whose children have been very good friends to Ally this year and made her feel comfortable and welcome. I thanked them for raising such nice and friendly kids, and expressed my gratitude.